Dude, Where’s My Emotion: what toxic masculinity takes from us

Toxic masculinity is a pretty dicey subject. People never really know what or how much to say about it. There’s also a lot of fear that covering it will alienate too many people. Even though it’s been on my list of things I wanted to write about, I was torn on whether I needed, should, or even wanted to write about it. The reason it’s been on that list is because it seems like every day there’s a new example of men doing problematic shit without knowing or thinking it’s problematic. Many men also seem incapable of connecting with others or themselves, which also leads to a lot of problems. Some may think it’s unfair to make these generalizations because not every dude is walking around praising Andrew Tate. While that may be true, it’s not just people like Tate who are at fault. It’s the system that creates them and the more subtle behaviors that we’ve (men) all been guilty of in one way or another. It’s hard because I want to give empathy to people who didn’t have the opportunity to learn healthy behavior but at the same time not excuse the toxic things they’ve done. So please don’t take anything in this piece as an apology for the terrible ways that men have acted and continue to act. Women deserve the credit for leading the charge against these behaviors but need support. I guess this is my way of offering support and a point of view on the whole thing. 

So the first place to start would be to explore the actual concept of toxic masculinity. Since the 80s and 90s, this term has been used to describe the negative traits that come with how society raises men. What those traits really boil down to is a lack of vulnerability and disconnecting from emotions. Men, particularly older men, have been raised not to show emotions or vulnerability because it supposedly makes them look weak. We’ve been taught that any weakness will put us at the bottom of the tribe and that only “strong” men get what they want. When you’re taught that emotions shouldn’t be shown, you start viewing them as an inherently bad thing. Especially if it will put you at a disadvantage in the tribe or community, so you avoid them altogether. This creates dysfunction in how you approach the world because emotions are indicators. Emotions give us information about our lives and ourselves. We shouldn’t always allow them to dictate our behavior, but we still need them in order to know what’s going on in our mind, body, and soul. Also when you actively avoid your emotions, you don’t know when they’re running your life or not. This is where I think the toxicity comes in. When you lose that connection, you lose all ability to approach the world with any warmth or nuance. Everything becomes a competition, where each moment is live or die and every interaction is win or lose. 

This competition is unfortunately an essential part of how boys are raised. If you think about the types of games and activities that are marketed towards them it’s based almost purely on competition. They’re all about utter domination and being the last one standing. While I don’t think games are necessarily a problem they do show how society views young men. Whereas marketing for girls is more emotional and cooperative. Obviously, the activities themselves aren’t and shouldn’t be restricted to gender, but the marketing definitely is. Not only is this reflected in marketing but in the way that people interact with young kids. It’s why “boys don’t cry” is a phrase most of us have heard. From an early age kids are taught that boys are supposed to be the strong ones who fight to come out on top and girls are the ones that are supposed to care about people. These early lessons have real ramifications for how society is run. Men in power can’t make nuanced decisions or discern how they’re feeling. So they consolidate power in the form of force instead of connection. It’s what leads to someone like Putin launching a war in Ukraine because his consolidated power feels threatened. It’s the same story time over time, where a powerful man loses his shit because all he knows is force. 

It’s not just geopolitics. Without being in touch with your emotions, it’s hard to relate to other human beings as humans. We lose a connection not just with ourselves but with other people. Talking about emotions with other people is how you can truly gain an understanding of who they are as a person. That’s how you can actually work together without everything being about who’s winning and losing. If you separate yourself from that connection, relationships become transactions of force and power. Women get caught up in all of this because they aren’t viewed as emotional partners in a relationship, they’re viewed as “assets” to collect in a competition. Despite so-called progress, life is still hard if you’re not part of the group that set up the competition. It creates a skewed power dynamic where if a girl is out with her friends she’s acutely aware of being viewed as a “prize” in the room, which puts unfair pressure on her to be part of a competition that she never agreed to. The workplace also suffers from this power dynamic, where women trying to climb the corporate and political ladders are wary of being seen as “weaker” opponents because of their emotions, or worse a potential “asset”. This creates more pressure and obstacles in the path of women just trying to live their lives. Describing this world and even using the term “asset” in this context feels gross, but if you’ve spent any time in these rooms you’d know it’s not an exaggeration of what goes on. 

Historically, not all social systems were run like this, but the ones that did were the ones that became the foundations of today. By the nature of how they were formed, these systems will do anything to preserve their way of life. This is why there’s so much backlash when we do try to make progress. The system creates fear of progress, which some can use to gain power and spread toxicity. Hillary was a flawed candidate and made mistakes, but toxic masculinity absolutely played a part in her loss. Trump is an expert at playing on fears of progress and came in as the perfect savior for toxic men. The only qualification he needed was that he promised power to these men and used the right dog whistles to make that promise. If he made emotional or compassionate appeals he’d be seen as weak by his base, who were terrified of losing their strength. Most of them have no idea why they feel the way do since they aren’t connected to their real emotions. All they know is that what they’ve been taught, that life is a competition, a competition they were losing because of women and non-white people. Emotional disconnect and lack of vulnerability were core pieces of the puzzle that Trump used to gain sway over these people. Other grifters take advantage of this as well. Whether it’s Jordan Petersen or Joe Rogan, they use these fears to gain influence over young men. Young men who are already struggling with finding their place in the world. When someone comes in and tells them how to become “strong” and “win” the competition, it unfortunately resonates with them. 

The internet makes it much easier to target these young men struggling to find their place in the world. Social media algorithms do a great job at starting people at the top of the funnel with people like Rogan and Petersen, who supposedly have answers to their questions, and then quickly guide them to much more harmful content like Andrew Tate's. Like many topics I write about, this comes back to the attention economy. Intense emotions like anger and moral outrage keep people engaged with content longer. Algorithms take advantage of that in situations like when a 12-year-old who’s trying to find himself goes on YouTube looking for content about growing up and becoming a man. The first video they watch may be somewhat problematic, but not dangerously misogynistic. After that though, the next videos they watch are almost guaranteed to elicit much stronger emotional reactions in the hopes that the kid keeps their eyes on the screen. Over time the kid becomes trapped in a bubble filled with this content and they get converted to toxic or dangerous idealogies. This digital pipeline radicalizes young men by hijacking their attention and taking advantage of their worst fears or impulses. It’s something that they aren’t even conscious of, and most parents aren’t aware of. There’s no excuse for what some of these kids do after being radicalized, they’re the ones who are deciding to act, but there are determining factors behind those actions. 

When a sizeable part of the population becomes emotionally stunted due to these societal influences, it has strong ripple effects. It creates groups of men who are simply unable to process who they are and find their place in the world. Not every guy falls victim to it but two large groups come out of this toxic wormhole. Incels and Fuckboys. If you asked people in the two groups about the other, they’d claim the other is almost a different species. In reality, they’re two sides of the same fucked up coin. Incels feed on the loss of power narrative, believing they’re the victims of masculinity. They shame themselves for not meeting the societal criteria of masculinity and learn to hate themselves because of it. In doing that, they adopt the exact same views as those they hate. They view women as objects, whom they can’t “obtain”, so they turn their hate not just on themselves but on girls too. Fuckboys on the other hand believe it’s their right to “obtain” what they want. They lash out by trying to gain the power they think they deserve and play into messed-up gender roles. Both groups are struggling with the same issues of self-worth and emotional disconnect, they just have different ways of expressing that. Without the vulnerability to connect with other people, they create these twisted views of the world which lead to some incredibly toxic behavior. I just want to be clear here that I don’t have a soft spot for either group. As I wrote up top, although a lot of men don’t have the opportunities to learn healthy social skills, this in no way excuses them acting like assholes. 

Another aspect of people’s lives that these systems affect is friendships. I forget who I first heard talk about it, but women’s friendships have been described as face-to-face, meaning they connect with one another and actually talk. While men’s friendships have been described as side-by-side. We watch sports, drink, and play video games but don’t actually connect face-to-face. The world isn’t that black and white, everyone does a little of both, but if you think about your own friendships you can see a lot of truth in these descriptions. Where toxic masculinity comes in is that side-by-side friendships can get in the way of getting help or support when you need it. It inherently keeps things surface-level, so if someone is really going through it, there isn’t an opportunity for them to talk about how they’re feeling. Without those opportunities, men can’t create deep relationships where they’re allowed to be vulnerable. Which in turn leaves them feeling alone and isolated with their emotions. There’s no alternative but to keep living by the rules they were taught. They bottle their emotions, disconnect from themselves, and try to play the part of a “real” man. Being a “real” man just creates a bigger hole and leads to behaviors that don’t just harm them but the people around them. 

So what does positive masculinity look like? That’s hard to say. To me, I think it means being there to support the people in your life and becoming someone that people can count on. It means showing up for people not just physically with “power” but emotionally too. We can still be providers, warriors, and guardians but not in place or in conflict with our emotions. It’s also not in conflict with the other people in our lives. It’s not about providing or fighting for, it’s about providing or fighting with. The women in our lives have their own strengths and we need to recognize that. We also need to recognize that we have much more similarities than differences. We all have certain roles regardless of gender, it’s about investigating those roles and seeing what works. The only way to do that is by getting in touch with how we actually feel, vocalizing that, and working through it. Other people aren’t just opponents or “assets”, they’re just people like us. We also have to be careful that we don’t fall into the trap of only learning how to talk like we get it but never follow through with our actions. An example of this is Jonathan Majors. This guy was an immensely talented actor, who a lot of people looked up to because of the type of positive masculinity he seemingly portrayed. In the end, though, it turned out it was all a front and the dude is an abuser who just knew how to say all of the right things. 

All of this is why it’s up to those of us who survived the classic American upbringing and somehow turned into well-adjusted adults to be models for the next generation. For every Joe Rogan or Ben Shapiro, there should be someone else showing kids that all of that bullshit doesn’t lead to a good life or meaningful relationships. It’s so much more fulfilling to actually be in tune with who you are and the people around you. It’s insanely depressing to just go through life seeing every moment and every person as a win-or-lose situation. With that view, you miss out on the beauty of actually living. So many people have been robbed of a good life because they or someone they love were convinced that they had to be the “strong” man. Living life this way has left us sad and broken trying to be the winners of an imaginary game. The next generation needs to know that showing emotions and vulnerability is okay. It’s okay to care, and it’s okay to work together. It’s not just okay, it’s the strong thing to do. Kindness isn’t a weakness. Being vulnerable and connected is courageous. We need a new approach where instead of being a real man, it’s time to be a real human.